


the things we can be

by lalaietha



Category: Emberverse - S. M. Stirling
Genre: Canon Character of Color, F/M, Gen, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 13:59:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/lalaietha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look through the life of Angelica Hutton</p>
            </blockquote>





	the things we can be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Laylah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/gifts).



> Written as a Yuletide2011 treat for Laylah. :D

**1: Daughter**

Mama always smells nice, like flowers and spices. Flowers because she puts them in her hair, even after all this time and all her children; spices, because she's the best of cooks, and if she's not making something, she's planning, or buying things to make something, or teaching Angelica how.

Angelica promises herself that when she's grown, when she's a woman instead of a little girl, she'll be just like Mama. Just as beautiful, and just as elegant, and just as good at everything she does. She tells her mother this once while they're making tortillas together.

Her mother laughs. It's a strange kind of grownup laugh; Angelica's not sure it means Mama found something funny, or if it's more complicated than that. Then Mama leans down to kiss her cheek and says, in a particular kind of voice, "Be smarter in choosing a man, love. Be smarter in choosing a man."

Angelica thinks about that, later, while she tries to fall asleep. Miguel, who's only a little older than her, swears he can remember Papa, but Gabriel and Rafael always tell him to shut up, and say he's full of shit. Angelica can't remember their father at all, only knows that he's gone and Mama doesn't like to talk about him.

Before, she remembers sometimes, men she didn't know would say things to Mama Angelica didn't understand then, and doesn't totally understand now. But it doesn't happen anymore. Hasn't happened since Rafael grew so much over just a few months and then came home that one night with a split lip and skinned knuckles. Since then, everyone's polite to Mama, especially since Gabriel grew up even taller than Rafael, and Miguel's getting big himself.

After trying to fall asleep by herself for what feels like a long time, Angelica gets out of her own little bed (the one she gets all to herself because she's a girl) and tiptoes past where her brothers are sleeping to the bed Mama sleeps in. Mama's reading something, cover of the book folded back around. She looks up at Angelica, smiles, shakes her head and holds up the covers.

"Just for a little while," she says. But even though her voice is stern, Angelica knows she'll wake up here in the morning.

 

 **2: Lover**

He's tall, handsome, Angelica likes his voice, he's good with horses, and most important, he's not from here or anywhere near here. Still, Carmen makes a face.

"'Hutton'," she says, exaggerating the American pronunciation in a bad American accident, making it sound ridiculous. "You marry him, you'll end up being called 'Hutton'."

Isabel snorts. "Who said anything about marrying? He's American, he'll be gone before anyone notices anything."

"Isabel!" Carmen says, still so much the good girl, in genuine shock. Isabel gives her an arch look.

"Well what else are the Americans for?" she demands.

" _Isabel_ ," Angelica says, feigning horror and pushing her friend's shoulder.

"Hah," Isabel says, pushing back. "Admit it, it's what you were thinking."

"What _you_ were thinking," Angelica retorts, "I would never."

"Not me," Isabel shakes her head. "Too dark for me, Angelica. And too rough. I want a man who knows about more than horse-shit and beer."

It descends into laughing, giggling, pushing and nudging each other and teasing Isabel about being a snob and about being so crude at the same time. Isabel tosses her hair and turns on a haughty look Carmen and Angelica both wish they could copy.

Angelica doesn't tell them that she's already met Guillermo, met William Hutton three nights now, and that she'll meet him again tonight, when she sneaks past her brothers and her sleeping mother and Will meets her just beside the house.

This is her secret, and you keep secrets by not telling _anyone_.

 

 **3: Sister**

Her mother takes her by the arm, drags her into the kitchen and pushes her into a chair. "I thought you had more sense than this," she says, voice low and angry. Angelica folds her arms and looks away. After a beat, she knows she ruins her own stony look by sniffing and reaching up with a thumb to wipe away one of her tears before folding her arms again.

"Damn it, Angelica," her mother snaps; it makes Angelica look at her in shock, because Mama never swore. "You are - " her mother stopped, took a deep breath and demanded, "Do you want this man?"

"No, Mama," Angelica says. The hurt and the anger get in the way of her common sense, making her sharp and sarcastic when she knows she shouldn't be. "I've only been sneaking out with him for a year and he's only come all the way _back_ \- "

The slap she gets isn't hard, but it still stuns her. She'd been spanked when she was little, once or twice, but Mama never needed to use her hands: even with Angelica's brothers, her voice always worked. Angelica stares at her mother, open-mouthed.

"Don't be stupid," her mother says, the s almost a hiss. "Do you?"

Completely off-balance, Angelica just nods, telling the truth with the movement because her voice won't work. Her mother puts her hands on her hips.

"Then you better get out there and find him," she says. Her voice dire. "You _better_ find him and you _better_ convince him he wants to marry you, girl, and you better do it before your brothers find him. And hope you can convince them he doesn't need a beating before the altar, even so."

When Angelica just stares at her, Mama points to the door. " _Get!_ " she half-yells, and the sound runs through Angelica like an electric spark.

It sends her running out the door, to find Will or her brothers or both, and to pray they hadn't found each other yet.

 

 **4: Wife**

She doesn't really see Mike Havel, or the white kid who'd been with him or the rest of the white kid's family. Angelica just sees Will, and for a minute she can't breathe.

Because if she breathed, it'd turn into a sob, and damned if she'd do that in front of the others. Not yet, anyway. Maybe not ever.

For Luanne, it's different; Angelica doesn't say anything as their daughter lets out a cry and throws herself across the space between them, hitting Will just as Will's feet touch the ground and throwing him back into Red, the horse; Red stumbles a little and snorts, but just steps away, too used to the stupidity of humans to be upset.

It means Will's mostly done cracking every vertebra in Luanne's back by the time Angelica's just walked - quickly, but walked, not run - to the both of them.

For Luanne, for herself, for Will, she doesn't show that relief makes her want to cry and makes her feel faint; she doesn't show the sick feeling that's panic and terror passing their poisons out of her body now that they have no reason to stay. But Angelica puts all her strength into the arms she slides around her husband's neck and all her strength into tightening them as he does his around hers.

And in his ear she's breathing _thank God thank God thank God thank God_ , over and over again, and starting to lose the battle with tears.

"Oh Angel," Will says, one hand curved around the back of her head, the other one crushing her to him. "I'm so sorry."  
   
At that, she pulled back immediately and punched him lightly on the shoulder. "For what?" she demanded. "For not being invincible? Don't you dare."  
         
Luanne says nothing, but works into the space Angelica left to hug her father again. Angelica wipes the slight mist from her eyes with a thumb and looks over Will's shoulder, to the faces of Mike Havel, the boy, two more young white women and tall white man with dead eyes, the look of someone who's seen something no one should have to.  
         
She steps over to them, extends a hand for whichever one wants to take it first, and switches to careful English to say, "I'm Angelica Hutton. I'm pleased and grateful to meet you."

 

 **5: Mother**

Will finds her sitting on the back porch with one of the few surviving photographs she has of Luke and Luanne together, tracing the sides of both of their faces. He sits down beside her and puts an arm gently around her waist before he says anything.  
         
It's a good back porch, Angelica thinks, trying to stop herself from thinking what she had before. It's a good house. Inside Larsdalen, they don't have to worry about their own walls, and their house is theirs and she can pretend, even if just for a moment, that they will ever be in anything other than a state of suspended war.  
         
Will's thumb moves over her hip and she leans her head on his shoulder. "What are you thinking, Angel?" he asks, and she sighs.  
         
"Luanne and Erik want to get married," she says. "They're fussing over it, so be nice tomorrow when the silly boy gets his courage up to ask you."  
         
Will absorbs that with equanimity and prompts, "And?"  
         
Angelica traces the jaw of the child she lost, and the frizzy hair of the one she still has. "And I am thinking that if it weren't for the hospitals and the doctors and the nurses and the electricity and the plastic and everything else, I and the baby would both have died. Both times."  
         
Will kissed her hair and tightened his arm around her. Then he said, "I was born in a bathtub. My brother really was born in a barn. Momma was fussing about the house-cleaning not two days after. So maybe she'll get it from my side of the family."  
       
Angelica lets the picture rest on her lap. "I hope so," she says, soft and sober. "We've been so blessed, so lucky, I keep waiting for it to run out. Mike says the dice have no memory, but I don't think even he has any idea just how - " she waves one hand, "how big the odds are. How often babies die, how often mothers die, how a little cut can knock you dead - "  
         
"Hey," Will interrupts her. "Hey, Angel. Don't."  
       

"I know," she says. "I just - " She lets it stop and chews on the inside of her mouth. She almost says, _she's the only one I have left_ , but instead she asks, "Do you ever imagine where Luke might be?"  
         
Will takes a deep breath at that, but says, "Yes," after a pause. "Sometimes."  
         
"I can't decide what's worse," Angelica admits. "If I think he's dead, or if I think he's alive, and then I have to decide if he's okay or if something terrible's happening to him, if he's stuck somewhere that makes the Protectorate look like a paradise. If - " she stops, takes a deep breath and says, "if I want to think about what he might have to do to survive."  
         
She almost doesn't say it; when she has, she's just waiting for Will to chide her for thinking like that, to chide her for thinking their son would ever cross lines she'd need to worry about. She waits for the moment that she has to think or say, _I know a little more about what people do at the end of need, husband_.  
         
Instead, Will just says, "I don't have an answer, Angel. I can't decide either."

 

 **6: Self**

Most of the books that come out of Corvallis's knew, much-anticipated press are reprints or technical manuals, news-sheets and other necessary things; even the fiction is mostly set off older books, many of them falling apart.  
         
But there are a couple of people in Corvallis writing new things, and one of them writes romances, and every time someone goes to Corvallis they're under orders to bring one of the books back - at least one - for Angelica.  
         
"It is my fee," she had informed Mike, the one time he'd brought it up. "If you want, I can stop doing all the things that make your life easier that it's paying for?"  
         
"Uh," said Mike, who Signe had at least taught to recognize certain tones of voice. "No, that's okay, I was just curious." And Angelica had smiled at him and he'd gone away and left her alone.  
         
He has, at least, the sense to know that if he had to do without her, so much would fall down around his ears.  
         
It's hard to tell if the books are good. Angelica's never been much for caring about literature (that was her mother): she only cares if it lets her pass the time and leaves her happier than she was. And it's been so long since she had anything new, anything that wasn't read and reread and reread, because even in English she read quickly and even for her and everything she had to do, winter nights and days were long - it's been so long that it almost seems like anything fresh, anything she can guarantee she hasn't read before, is a blessing.  
         
And it's nice to read books not about the lost, pre-Change world or some romantic idea of the further past, but set in their world, now, with so many of them straddling the Change with their lives.  
         
She takes the newest one - a treat she's been saving until today, the day she emphatically declared her _day off_ more than six years and two grandchildren ago now - and lies with it in a hammock in the sun, chilled and honey-sweetened mint tea beside her.  
         
Angelica misses Mexico on days like this, and citrus and tequila and ice-cream that didn't take so much work to make. And cars, and everything else, but mostly Mexico. The Mexico she remembers; she doesn't like to think of what it might be like now. Things had been hard enough before the Change, most places. Now?  
         
Well. Maybe the worst had burnt out and they were rebuilding, too. Maybe rebuilding something better. She could hope.  
         
The rag paper the Corvallis people made is getting better each time, and it's almost thin enough that the covers don't look awkward and stuffed. When one of her own apprentices knocks at the door, she calls out, " _Day off_! Unless someone is dying go talk to Olivia, I don't want to hear it!"  
         
She listens for a moment, to make sure that the kid goes away again instead of there actually being an emergency, but there's just quiet.  
         
Smiling slightly, Angelica goes back to her book.  


End file.
